Case Analysis in Colombia

We share the above-mentioned analyzes, but we wanted to carry out a legal analysis of the reasons why in the bidding processes in Colombia only one or two bidders are presented, and for this purpose, a case analysis is proposed to show a volume of bidding processes. selection of contractors in which the Public Administration through public tenders intends to award public works contracts whose investment amount exceeds one billion pesos, which has not correctly applied the principle of proportionality as required by the current order, specifically article 5 of the law 1150 of 2007 in the qualifying requirements within which is the experience and the most important, where the addressing or the preparation of specifications may be tailored.

The standard establishes that the enabling requirements, within which the experience is found, must be “adequate” and “proportional” to the nature of the contract and its value. If we take up the idea of ​​the legislator in the explanatory memorandum of Law 1150 of 2007, we see that there is modified the principle of objective selection to eradicate a recurrent practice and is the direction of the public tenders through specifications to the measure of proponents determined, and that apparently be practiced was not able to dismantle as recorded by the media and as will be demonstrated around what is going to be stated next.

Therefore, by means of a series of initial legal considerations, it is proposed to compare them with the models of specifications prepared by state entities in order to determine whether or not there is a violation of this legal concept, for which indicators were structured. From this analysis, it was also proposed to prepare a survey to evaluate the concurrence of the process, its economic benefit and whether the entity excluded proportionality to define the participation rule.

We take as universe population the public tenders that were advanced as of October 14, 2012 date in which public entities were obliged to publish their public tenders in SECOP until December 31, 2015. From that universe, Qualified characteristics to obtain what would be the population: public tenders to award contracts of work of more than one billion pesos where they had already held the respective works contracts and which resulted in 3069 public tenders.